Climate Adaptation Digital Twin – building an operational climate information system to support decision-making

The Climate Change Adaptation Digital Twin (Climate DT) is part of the Destination Earth (DestinE) initiative, developing Digital Twins of Earth to increase resilience against environmental changes. More specifically, Climate DT provides capabilities supporting climate change adaptation at regional and national levels at multi-decadal time scales. We present here an overview of Climate DT, highlighting the added value for the users and discussing the transition of the system towards the operations.  

The development of Climate DT has started in Phase 1 of DestinE, during which the first prototype of the new climate information system has been developed. A key innovation of Phase 1 was the introduction of a generic state vector (GSV), which is evolved by the Earth system models (ESMs) and streamed to applications from climate adaptation impact sectors.  This has created a basis for a pioneering climate information system that enables (i) provision of global climate information at an unprecedented granularity, (ii) scaling the system across a number applications that have access to all the data they need, (iii) user-centric approach with new ways of co-design and opportunities for enhancing interactivity. In Phase 2, which started in May 2024, our focus is on operationalizing Climate DT to deliver high-quality climate and impact-sector information regularly while incorporating new interactive features.

The operational model of the Climate DT is built around three storm- and eddy resolving ESMs; ICON, IFS-NEMO and IFS-FESOM. The operational framework utilizes a DevOps-like cycle, including three set-ups: d-suite for development, e-suite for testing the operational set-up and o-suite for operating the system. The o-suite simulations will provide data covering both past (1990-2020) and future periods (2020-2050) with a 5 km global grid. Additionally, capabilities for special simulations are developed, including story-line simulations for future periods of extremes as well as what-if scenario simulations enabling a new level of interactivity.

The added value of Climate DT to users is demonstrated through four impact sector applications. These applications operate on the streamed GSV as part of the operational framework, and they are improved in co-design with key users. The impact sector applications cover societally relevant climate change adaptation domains, including wind energy management, disaster risk management (with regards to wildfires and floods), as well as agriculture and water management. Climate DT output, including high-resolution climate simulations, storyline simulations, user-relevant indicators and impact assessments are made available to users via DestinE Service Portal.